by: Larry Coco, Coco Training & Coaching – It is now time to analyze the results. The cold, hard fact is that your sales team came up short of expectations. The sales pipelines were not filled to an acceptable level. By drilling down, you and your management team notice that the billed orders were, in large part, generated by current customer upgrades and some new business as well.
You think about what more could have been done to meet the established targets and reflect on your great successes as a sales rep years ago. Then the light bulb suddenly goes on and the realization hits: Referrals were always a big part of your sales funnel and they helped you get to the promised land in a consistent manner.
It is now time to ask yourself if you have a true referral process in place. If not, why not? The fact that you are now thinking about this is a good thing, as research tells us that 41 percent of the business generated by the best sales executives in the technology space come from referrals.